Dante wrote,
“In the middle of the road of my life
I awoke in the dark wood
where the true way was wholly lost,”

or so I thought so many times, but
it’s always hind sight isn’t it?
Looking but not being able to see

the forest for the trees, I thought
I should have been an attorney or
a clinical psychologist not a poor

country preacher. With deep, heart-
felt regrets for taking up the
precious time of others with my re-

curring fraughts and oughts —
shoulda, coulda, woulda — until
I sat in a pew opposite the pulpit

that I knew so well and knew how
much I needed to hear good news.
Then I knew I only thought I was

lost; but now I know even in part,
knew and will know and it was, is
and will be good every step along

the way, each day. Could I not
have known, thus saving sorrows
and regrets? I know now, which is

then and will be and I was, am and
will be free. I have stared into the
abyss, green Grendel’s lake of dark

dreams, he reaching out to drag
me into the suffocating soup of
oblivion before Beowulf befriend-

ed me. Am I not to sleep? I went
down into the lake and met the
mother of all my fears, for one

had gone before and there in the
dark, I saw the bright beach with
hot sand dripping blood from the

beautiful blond only to discover
that I was stabbing myself. Drop-
ping the knife, I embraced myself;

the wounds healing in my awakening
and I am grateful to have been what
I was, am and will be in God’s ever-

present, compassionate eternity.